TURBIDITY REDUCTION FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF PILOT SCALE ELECTROCOAGULATION DEVICES

Abstract

: A preliminary study to reduce the turbidity of drinking water by electrocoagulation method has been previously investigated. Subsequent studies were then conducted with various turbidity and initial precipitation treatments. Cikapundung River and Cisangkuy River are the main drinking water sources in Bandung with very fluctuating turbidity. In the water supply system, turbidity is one of the important factors to be observed due to several reasons such as aesthetic, consideration of load to filtration, and disinfection
process. This study aims to apply the electrocoagulation process to reduce turbidity as an alternative to conventional coagulation system by utilizing Poly Aluminum Chloride (PAC). Electrocoagulation is one method of water treatment by combining the process of coagulation, flotation and electrochemistry. In this work, the electrocoagulation experiments were set up by varying the current density from 10-30 volts with 5-30 minutes detention time so that the turbidity variation could be created in a range of 25 Nephelometric Turbidity Unit (NTU) up to 400 NTU. In addition, the experiments were carried out by a precipitation process
prior to the electrocoagulation process. The optimum conditions of the electrocoagulation process with both initial and non-precipitated depositions occurred at initial turbidity of 400 NTU with electrocoagulation time and with a 100 RPM fast stirring for 10 minutes to have a turbidity reduction of 99.52% and 98.28 %. The optimum current density for non-precipitating conditions was 21.33 A / m2, whereas it is with precipitating of 46.22 A / m2. This optimum condition is useful for a pilot scale development.